Lev’s Log: Confessions of a trail dumb downer.

That rock that you would always pedal-strike, I made it smoother. That ditch you could almost wheelie across, I filled it in so now you can roll it.
That tight switchback that you could hop around like Ryan Leach and all your friends were impressed, I made it so you can pedal around it.

 I have a confession: I am the guy who dumbs down your trails.

Over many years and miles of trail work, I have smoothed, buffed, filled in gap jumps, opened up corners, bench-cut narrow trails, dismantled wooden features, made mandatory drops rollable, armored stutter bumpy corners, cut out roots, rerouted trail, and I apologize for none of it.

Let’s back up a bit and get some perspective on this issue. I grew up in a northern California town with a burgeoning mountain bike community; above town there is a university with a campus with expansive meadows and acres of dark redwood forest, and a budding renegade trail system. I began mountain biking in high school with two buddies. As our skills progressed and we searched farther and farther for cool trails, we added to the growing underground build scene, and built a steep downhill trail close to town on the university property. Though completely illegal and equipped with little more than our bikes and a rake between us, we “built” our first trail. The result was steep, rocky, surfy and unsustainable. Don’t worry, no campers died during the process (If you have ridden this campus you know what trail I’m talking about)

trailbandit

I continued building trails without permission over the years in California and in Central Oregon, when I moved here. The theme was always steep and technical, usually as much fall line as possible. Eventually, I joined my local trail association because I decided I could put my efforts to better use by cooperating with the authorities to develop legal, land owner approved trails. Now, I am a trail crew leader, designer and head builder with Central Oregon Trail Alliance in Bend. My main focus is the more technical trails we build and maintain. I have also adopted two trails and have added a lot of my personal flair to both. Ever ridden South Fork or Whoops? Those are my babies.

Who else is a trail dumb downer? Folks who have been working on trails for a long, long time. Guys like me who do trail work all the time don’t want to come back to the same problem on a trail over and over. We have learned to approach trail sections with a five or even ten-year plan to make our efforts sustainable. A trail dumb downer may be working with local land management to develop better trail systems in your area, and the scratched in track out your back door is becoming the “Blue Square” route. Trails close to town should be the easier trails, with the more technical advanced trail further out and harder to find.

I am calling out anyone who whines publicly about losing the one technical feature on their favorite local loop for being shortsighted. Before getting all indignant, consider the history of the trail, why it’s there, who built it, was it built to be mountain bike specific or is it an old hiking trail that we now ride? However the trail started, degradation happens over time; and needs upkeep. Often times the big rut or erosion problem ends up being the most technical part of the trail.

Case in point: There is an MTBR thread questioning some work I did on a trail that is many locals favorite downhill. It has fast rooty sections, hard loose corners and rough straights that require advanced mountain bike skill to ride well. However, this trail did not start out rowdy or chundery. When built in the 1980s it started out as smooth, loamy hiking trail. After being rolled over by thousands of knobby tires and 30 years of rainstorms and snow melt, the roots became more and more exposed and yes, more technical and more fun. To make it more sustainable, the most eroded sections need fixing and armoring. Yes, adding flat rock and covering the roots dumbed down the trail, but what it accomplished is a piece of trail that will hopefully last 10 more years. Here is the Forum post, http://forums.mtbr.com/oregon/more-dumbing-down-bend-trails-938030.html.

I still want to ride steep, techy trails like the ones that scared me on that unnamed campus as a kid, and I know where to find them. They are not the after-work ripper loop that you bust out of from your house or the two-mile loop out of your local trail center. You must make an effort to ride these trails, go beyond guidebook or online reviews to find these trails. The trails that are on the maps and in guidebooks, have an established trail head and have a trail rating, and need a bit of homogenizing to serve the masses.

There is no preserving a trail. What you experience today, this week or even this year is just a snapshot in time. The trail will change; plants encroach on it, rocks and trees fall and the trail shifts in response, heavy rains erode the surface exposing roots, rocks and forming ruts. The maintenance done usually makes the trail easier, by default. But don’t worry; soon enough, the trail will change again.

Is this an issue in your area? What do you think of the work done to your local trails?
Are you a trail dumb downer too?
What are your reasons to make a difficult section more rideable?
Have your trails been dumbed? What do you think of the changes?

Cool article in a Dutch magazine

Writer and Photographer Ronald Jacobs came and rode with us. He had a wonderful time, of course, and took some great shots. Our guides came out to to ride, look for Sara, Matt and Lev ripping some trail for the camera. The article is in Dutch, we will try to get an English version.

Bend’s Kirt Voreis is an influential mountain biking ambassador

Mountain biking in Central Oregon
Drugs were a way of life for Kirt Voreis’ parents.

His father died in a motorcycle crash while high on cocaine when Kirt was just 5 years old. He recalls how his mother raised him among methamphetamine addicts in Fontana, Calif., and became addicted to the drug herself, working nights to support her son.

Kirt remembers fighting off his mother’s heroin-addicted boyfriend when he was just 10 years old.

He was determined not to follow the same tragic path as his parents.

“I grew up around a lot of Hells Angels and stuff like that,” Voreis says. “Meth is big now, but when I was a kid it was life. My mom got hooked on it to work and feed me. Most of my adolescence, it was me going and finding things on my own. It was a crazy environment to grow up in. I wouldn’t change it for anything, but … I put a lot of my effort into sport. For me, it was about jumping down streets on my skateboard.”

Voreis — who is now 38 and has lived in Bend for seven years — took up skateboarding at the age of 15, and dabbled in biking when he could find a friend’s bike to ride.

“I broke a lot of kids’ bikes,” Voreis recalls.

That can happen when you attempt things on bikes that have never been done before.

Those early days on borrowed bikes were the start of Voreis’ path to becoming a pioneer of downhill and freeride mountain biking. He is now known as one of the best all-around mountain bikers in the world, and a driving force in the rapid evolution of the sport.

Voreis travels across the nation each spring and summer on his AllRide Tour, promoting all disciplines of mountain biking and introducing kids to the sport. He also volunteers more than 100 hours a year helping build and maintain trails here with the Central Oregon Trail Alliance.

When Kirt was still a teenager, his mother remarried, and his stepfather encouraged Kirt to follow his passions and escape his troubled childhood.

“He changed me,” Kirt recalls. “With his tutelage and him opening my mind, he had passion. I didn’t realize I had passion for these sports.”

By the age of 17, Voreis had moved on from skateboarding competitions to cross-country mountain bike racing. He became a professional downhill racer in 1994 after sending a tape of himself performing back flips on his BMX bike to the owner of Yeti Cycles.

In 1996, Kirt had blossomed into a top World Cup downhill and dual slalom racer. (Downhill races are time trials held on steep terrain, with high-speed descents and extended air time off jumps and other obstacles. Dual slalom races are head-to-head competitions down a course of berms, jumps and drops.)

From 1998 to 2000, Voreis raced for the Mountain Dew/Specialized team alongside his friend and freeride legend Shaun Palmer. The two created a rabid following with their colorful personalities. By 2001, mountain bike racing had grown stale for Voreis.

“I thought those guys didn’t have skills, they just pedal,” he says.

He reinvented himself by making a video called “Evolution,” which features him racing on the World Cup circuit AND performing freeride tricks. It was released before freeride videos became commonplace.

As mountain biking began to shift toward freestyle riding in 2002, Voreis won several freestyle/dirt jump events and was filmed in many cutting-edge videos. Evolving with the sport, he re-branded himself as a freerider while he continued to race World Cup events.

“By 2002, I was racing and traveling the world and making a lot of money,” Voreis says.

In 2003, Voreis started the AllRide Tour. The tour is now sponsored by Specialized, and Voreis says he averages more than 30,000 miles on the tour’s van each May through September.

The goal of AllRide is to promote Specialized products — but also to get people into mountain biking.

“Each year I get 400 to 600 people on bikes to test my products, and we have a junior racing team,” says Voreis, who quit racing in 2005.

That same year Voreis and his wife Lindsey moved to Bend from Southern California. Lindsey — who handles most of the business behind the AllRide Tour and guides rides for Cog Wild Mountain Bike Tours in Bend — was raised in Portland, and would travel to Black Butte for vacation when she was growing up. When she introduced Kirt to Central Oregon, he knew he had found home.

“I realized what mountain biking should be — it was accessible to people,” Voreis says. “Other places are too steep. The trails … we all work together and there’s a community.”

Voreis is still an avid skateboarder, and he also enjoys snowboarding and kayaking. His favorite mountain bike trails include the McKenzie River Trail, South Fork, Flagline, and the slalom play loop at Phil’s Trailhead, which he builds and maintains.

“There’s something about Bend, with everything here,” Voreis says. “I change my mind a lot, so it’s good.”

By Mark Morical / The Bulletin

Published: September 07. 2012 4:00AM PST

Ride & Reach with Ryan Leech

Do you love Yoga and Mountain Biking? Join Ryan Leech to work on being a better mountain biker – through yoga.

Join Cog Wild & Ryan Leech for his amazing Ride & Reach program. Happening in Bend June 15 and 16, each day will focus on different aspects of mountain biking. Each day will include a 3-hour morning yoga session, lunch from Nancy P’s, shuttled ride with Ryan Leech and an outdoors cool down yoga session to end the day.

Ryan’s Ride & Reach is program designed to optimize the connection between mountain biking and yoga. Ryan’s morning yoga clinics will be open to the public, while the full day event is limited to 15 participants.

Contact Cog Wild to register for one or both days:
Friday, June 15th 8:30AM – 11:30AM: focus on building flow on the trail and yoga mat.
Saturday, June 16th 8:30AM – 11:30AM: focus on overcoming technical obstacles on the trail and yoga mat.

Morning only yoga through Back Bend Yoga: $25
The full day clinic through Cog Wild: $99

Bend bike business sees growth

The basics
What: Cog Wild Mountain Bike Tours & Shuttles
Employees: 18, seasonally
Where: 255 S.W. Century Drive, Suite 201
Phone: 541-385-7002
Website: https://www.cogwild.com
Local email list: email us at info@www.cogwild.com to be added to our local shuttle and event list.

Cog Wild offers Central Oregon cycling tours

Lev Stryker and Melanie Fisher saw the chance to add a new twist to Bend’s bike-crazy culture, and they took it.

Cog Wild had been operating since 1999 as a trail touring company, offering locals and tourists the chance to hop on a mountain bike and take in Central Oregon’s mammoth network of scenic trails.

But the owner of the business, Woody Starr, was looking for a change. In 2006, he sold Cog Wild to Stryker and Fisher, both biking enthusiasts.

In six years of ownership, the pair has grown Cog Wild from a four-person, experimental guide business to a seasoned member of the region’s tour-guide industry. The company seasonally employs 15 guides, who take riders of all skill levels on hundreds of miles of trails throughout Central Oregon and other parts of the state.

The pair has decades of cycling experience, both on trails and in road races: Stryker worked as a guide for Starr when he was running the business. Stryker is also a veteran of the renowned Cascade Cycling Classic.

Fisher has experience mountain biking in India, New Zealand, Japan, Thailand and elsewhere.

A shared love of mountain biking and the outdoors brought Stryker and Fisher together as business partners, with Fisher handling much of the bookkeeping, and Stryker as the point man for setting up guided trips.

Growing the business hasn’t come without challenges, Stryker said. He explained the process of recruiting new tour guides and exploring new trails, determining which would be suitable for beginner, intermediate and advanced riders.

The process has included plenty of trial and error, running each of the trails to figure out which they should incorporate into their tours and which were best left alone.

They’ve also built up a fleet of rental bikes over the years.

“We want to work a lot, to do quite a few more tours this summer” than in the past, Stryker said. Those tours vary from half-day, local trips for $60, all the way up to multi-day treks across different parts of the state, with $625 covering food, beer and lodging.

Steadily expanding the business over the last six years has given Cog Wild the benefit of a built-up reputation, especially with out-of-towners who swing through Bend in the summer.

“We have a lot of guides, and as soon as we’re really going this summer, they’ll work as much as possible,” Stryker said.

Q: How did you and Melanie Fisher first get involved with Cog Wild?

A: The former owner was interested in getting out. So we kind of pooled our backgrounds. Mel was very familiar with the booking and all the front-office stuff. And I’d guided for Cog Wild before. … The business was definitely much smaller at first. We’ve grown a lot since we started. We’ve adjusted our tours based on what’s been selling, doing more single- and half-day tours, which are great for people visiting town, people who aren’t necessarily mountain bike junkies.

Q: What type of riders does the business accommodate?

A: Basically, we take everyone, from a total beginner, a first-timer on a bike. We basically do a mountain bike clinic, at the same time showing people great trails, teaching them how to shift and brake. Those trips are fun; you get to really show them why we love the sport. But then we go all the way through with intermediate riders to experts, really fast riders who hire us because they want to be shown the best trails right away.

Q: What type of riding packages are you trying to promote?

A: We’re getting more into mountain bike vacations. Those are three-day, and sometimes longer, vacations. We either put the clients up in a hotel, or we have guides that are well-trained in making camps, who can make the experience really easy for clients. Those are great; you go for a ride, make camp, hang out by the fire and have a beer. We do it up, with full-course meals. There are great opportunities for that, either on the Cascade Lakes Highway, down the Umpqua River (or) near Mount Hood. Our huge trail system allows us to adjust the ride based on the group.

Q: How important is the local trail system to your business?

A: We’re blessed with this amazing trail system, with the (Deschutes) National Forest right outside of Bend. Maintaining them has been a collaborative effort with the Central Oregon Trail Alliance. Cog Wild has been involved from the beginning in helping with trail work, suggesting routes for new trails, being involved as a liaison with the Forest Service. The trails are obviously a big part of our success. They’re our bread and butter.

By Elon Glucklich / The Bend Bulletin
Published: May 08. 2012
eglucklich@bendbulletin.com

Spring Riding – Stay off muddy trails

Spring can be a hard time to be a local in Central Oregon. We all want to ride the trails, but the trails might not be ready for us. When the trails are soft with mud, ruts are created when we ride and these ruts stay around all summer long.

COTA (Central Oregon Trail Alliance) has a great article on the etiquette of riding in Spring. We invite you to check it out and make sure you ride the right places this time of year:

Potentially muddy trails are well signed, but not closed. COTA does not have the authority to “close” trails, but we do appreciate those who heed the mud warnings. Below are some pictures of the kind of impact caused by riding in soft, muddy conditions. These ruts will last throughout the summer. When the trails dry out later in the year, the ruts will set up like pavement. There is no way to fix this hard rutted condition except PREVENTION!

Thanks as always for your cooperation, please spread the (gospel) word of mud etiquette in Central Oregon. For further reading, please consult this article:

The Etiquette of Mud in Central Oregon.